Random rants about DIY projects, cooking, teaching, and vintage finds

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So, are you ready to see our tiny lake house? Or, at least, take a look at a couple of rooms? We are not completely finished, but, close enough! The complete tour would be too long for a blog post, so …

I’ll start with the most important room, and the reason we needed to build … the bathroom. The shower in the camping trailer just wasn’t cutting it for Saint. No elbow room.Now, he has plenty. The galvanized tin walls were my idea, well, mine and Pinterest, but they weren’t exactly like I planned. The vanity, however, turned out great.

We made this from an old desk I found on Craig’s List. I loved the original finish and hardware, so Saint just cut a hole for the galvanized bucket, which used to be new and shiny and didn’t look like it belonged before I found a way to age it by squirting toilet bowl cleaner on it and leaving in the sun all afternoon. I wanted to incorporate some family artifacts. The brick came from the chimney of an old log cabin on our farm. My great grandfather and his new bride moved into the log cabin in 1888. I don’t know how old it was then, but these bricks have been around a long time. A couple of the barn wood boards framing the mirror, a flea market find, came from that cabin, but Dad was pretty meticulous in keeping everything cleaned up around it (at Mom’s suggestion). I’ll bet if she had known what price those old barn wood boards are bringing now, she would have changed her tune.The old barn tin came from the Huffman farm bunkhouse. Other boards came from Saint’s brother’s farm, along with more of the old tin that we used on the walls. Saint was all ready to use his miter saw and 45 those beautiful boards until I told him I wanted a more rustic look. I do love the way it turned out. Here are other pictures of the spacious bathroom … well, for a tiny house! And do you see how we threw in the industrial look with the towel rod and toilet paper holder made from flanges and pipes?

In these last pictures, you can get a peek at the sliding barn door Saint made, and you can see the authentic hardware our dear friend gave us from an old barn. I left the rust because, well, who doesn’t like rust in rustic? You can also see the makeshift door (curtain) I made to hide the water heater.

Now, on to the kitchen. My mom always said if she built a house, she would leave the kitchen out. Well, we almost did. Knowing that most of the lake cooking would be done on the grill, I didn’t want to give much of our tiny space to a kitchen, but I wanted a fully functioning place to prep and clean. We continued the industrial rustic, using the same plumbing pipes to hold up open shelves. The cabinet is an old dresser I bought (Craig’s List, again) from a lady in Branson. It came with two mirrors, and I paid $80.00 for it. After cleaning and chalk painting a sparrow gray, we added a wooden counter top. The trick was finding a sink that the dresser-turned- cabinet would accommodate. I choose a dresser rather than an unfinished cabinet because I wanted a narrow piece to save space. Saint was able to work on the drawers to salvage most of them as he cut out the space for the sink and plumbing. We changed out the hardware and it’s good to go. By the way, I refinished both mirrors and could probably sell them for what I paid for the whole thing, but I may use one in the living room, later. And the brick … isn’t it amazing? Looks pretty authentic, right? Faux brick panels from Home Depot. The trick was whitewashing and blotting to get the antiqued look.

Equipped with a small refrigerator, microwave, coffee pot, two burner hot plate, toaster oven, and crock pot, we’re all set. The galvanized tin in back of the shower makes a nice back drop for pantry items, too. And the view from the kitchen window

makes even the tiniest kitchen picture perfect.

But, where do we eat, you ask? Mostly here.

on the porch overlooking the lake, but if we have to eat inside, we have this cute little drop leaf table with a (I know, who needs this) TV above it.

I still have some pieces to add and decorating to finish in the main area, and since this blog post is way longer than recommended, anyway, I’ll save the bed and living area, along with the details and how God has blessed this project for another day. Thanks for looking.

My favorite way to eat eggplant is sliced, dipped, battered, and fried, but who has time, right? Besides all the racket the smoke alarms make and the way the smoke boils through the sun streaking in the window and the smell…that stays in the house almost as long as all those calories stay on your thighs.

So, my daughter was telling me about a recipe her mother-in-law shared with her that she makes all the time. She TOLD me about it. She didn’t make it for me or write it down or anything, so I don’t remember exactly how she did it, but she’s a gourmet cook, so I know it was “involved.” I’m not all that into “involved.”

But, it sounded like a cheffed-up version of Eggplant Parmesan. And I do love me some Eggplant Parmesan. But, once again, we get into that aforementioned frying scene, so I decided to put my own lazy spin to this and see how it came out.

I didn’t exactly take step by step photos like a tutorial; heck, I usually skip those and scroll straight down to the recipe, anyway, don’t you? But this doesn’t have an exact recipe, either. That’s part of the Lazy.

I began with a large eggplant that I washed and trimmed off the ends. Next, I sliced it Hassleback style. (Place it in a salad plate so you don’t slice all the way through, just slit.) I placed the eggplant in a casserole dish, sprinkled it with Italian Seasoning, garlic salt, salt, and pepper, covered it with foil, and baked it at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. When I took it out, the eggplant was soft. In all the little pockets between the slices, I poured Ragu Spaghetti Sauce. (I used about half the jar at this stage.) Then I sprinkled in Mozzarella (4 oz.) and about a cup of Panko Bread Crumbs. Here’s the picture I took, and in hindsight, I would have made my slices thinner.

I poured the remainder of the jar of sauce over the top, sprinkled more bread crumbs over the whole thing, and dusted it with 1/2 cup of Parmesan. I returned it to the oven, uncovered, and raised the temp to 375. I cooked it about 20 mins. more before taking it out to rest.

All rested.

I served it to Saint with some fresh green beans from our garden and some sliced cucumbers from the neighbor’s. Last year I was posting about what to do with all those cucumbers. Not a problem this year. I think our vines are going to die before we get a single one.

What rating would I give this? Maybe 4 stars out of 5. I’d still prefer fried, but this was tasty, easy, and probably a bit healthier. If you like eggplant, I’d give it a go!

When your perfectly healthy body begins experiencing serious ailments like sagging skinbelly fat …no, I’m talking serious stuff like bone fractures from OSTEOPOROSIS, and you can’t or prefer not to take the risks of side effects from pharmaceuticals, you start looking for ways to strengthen your bones. My research led me past the Vitamin D3 to a lesser known Vitamin K2. Note to self: don’t ever use K2 in a sentence without prefacing it with the word Vitamin.

Vitamin K2 is not found in abundance naturally, and the source I found was not so palatable in its primary form. Scraping and eating the white pith of orange peel…not so “a-peel-ing” to most of us. This recipe for Sunshine Muffins calls for an entire orange. You heard me right, the whole thing…orange segments, peel, and Vitamin K2 rich pith. (Try saying that three times fast.) And it’s about the easiest muffin you’ll ever make. And it tastes good!

I found it years ago in this Cookbook, which I doubt is still in print. If you find it, buy it, because it’s one of my favorites; I keep it out on my cabinet, it’s that good.

To make these muffins, here’s what you will need:

1 orange

1/2 cup orange juice (I used fresh, but you could use frozen or from a carton)

1 egg

1/4 cup oil

1 and 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar or substitute (I used Xylatol)

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp salt (I use a pinch)

1/2 cup raisins (I prefer cranberries or dried cherries.)

1/2 cup chopped nuts

And here are the EASY instructions:

Cut the clean orange into eight pieces and remove any seeds, if you like, otherwise, throw the whole thing into the blender or food processor. Add orange juice, egg, and oil and blend until smooth. Add remaining ingredients and blend until just mixed. Pour into greased muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

This made 12 average muffins for me. If you want to make them gluten free, just use almond flour and adjust accordingly.

Fast, easy, minimal clean up, healthy and delicious! What more could you want in a muffin? And if you say meatloaf, mashed potatoes, or scrambled eggs, I’m not sure we can be friends. If you serve me a muffin, it had better be sweet…just sayin’.

I’m dreaming of a beautiful tablescape for Christmas brunch. I lust spend hours looking at and pinning gorgeous settings on my Pinterest boards. When I try to create them, I fall short. When I try to capture even that shortness on camera, I completely fail. That never stops me from trying.

Remember those wooden discs I left from last post? No? Well, let me refresh your memory.

I realized my wooden circles were much larger than the ones I wanted to recreate. I also knew I wanted to use what I had on hand rather than adding to my chaos stash of Christmas decor. I loved the small jewel toned ornaments that The Red Head used, but I had only clear, burgundy, and gold. And, what I did have was crinoline. I love that stuff! There’s just something so romantic and feminine about it, agree?

I also had a whole woods full of nature. So, I went gathering the naturals: boxwood, cedar, bark, twigs and sticks. Then I got my supplies and trusty hot glue gun. Just when I thought I had all that iridescent snow cleaned up, I grabbed it and started sticking it onto those wooden discs.

I started with the clear ornaments which I wrapped in crinoline and tied with shiny pink or white ribbon. I used a bit of the naturals plus odds and ends I had in my craft bag. When I had hot glued the ornament to the disc and added greenery, etc, I cut some black tag board rectangles for the names. My intent was to use a chalk pen so it would be erasable. Silly me. The chalk pen didn’t show up well enough, besides, who wants to store and reuse black paper rectangles? A metallic pen worked much better.

I had six clear ornaments, which I wrapped in crinoline. One table will only seat six people. The other six mixed ornaments needed to be cohesive in some way. I’m not into the matchy-matchy, but I did want them to look like they belonged together…like family, you know. The naturals I had gathered worked in doing just that. Here are a few of them.

And here’s what they look like all set up and ready for breakfast.

I know what you’re thinking…this girl really needs a new camera, and it’s probably true. But then I would need a tutor. You know, If You Give a Girl a Camera, she’s gonna want to take some pictures. And when she turns on the camera, she’s gonna need someone to show her how to use it. I’m thinking a photography class might be a good first step.

So what I lack in photography skills, I make up for in cre I still lack in photography skills. Never let it be said that I am not persistent, though. Or conservative. Just look at the Christmas tags I made from the leftover sticks and twigs.

I’m not giving up on making the cute ones I linked you to…just not this year.

It started as a quiet walk in the woods as Saint and I went looking for a log suitable for cutting wooden discs to turn into place cards for Christmas Breakfast.

And it ended in this.

As we passed the junk scrap wood pile, I noticed the legs I’d kept from a piece of furniture that we dismantled for another project. It’s hard to throw away good bones. I dragged it to the house where it sat under the deck for a few days, just long enough for it to call out to the weathered pallet propped against the wood pile. Saint and his saw soon merged the two into the “canvas.”

This is the back side where he cut and attached the pallet wood to the frame.

I downloaded a deer silhouette from Pinterest.

I positioned it on the “canvas” and set about using a stipple brush and some old jar of off white paint and water to whitewash the boards around the stencil.

So then it was just a matter of deciding how to adorn it. I had already decided what to do with it. It looked like something our daughter-in-law would like. But then I wasn’t sure. She was coming over soon, so I told Saint we would put it on our porch; if she noticed it and liked it, it would be hers. If not, it looked pretty good right on our front porch.

It went home with her! And she left something much better…but just for the weekend. And that’s the PLAN part of this post.

The Polar Express has long been one of my favorite Christmas read-alouds, probably beginning with the year that actress Tess Harper came to our classroom and read it to the kids. She cried. I cried. We were neither one sure the kids enjoyed it half as much as we did. Anyway, the plan was to create our little Polar Express tour of area Christmas lights with our granddaughter and her adorable friend.

I made tickets and bells. They wore their pajamas and hats…

And we boarded the train Avalanche with blankets, snack mix, and hot chocolate.

Saint “engineered” us to the lights.

After seeing the lights in rural Rogersville and a trip by the turn of the century home where we lived for several years, the girls voted to skip Springfield in favor of the horse drawn carriage ride through the Ozark City Park light display.

And even though it was a mild 50 degree evening, we thought we needed snow. We tried to create our own using a combination of corn starch, shaving cream, and iridescent snow flakes.

You can’t fool Mother Nature! It was too warm for snow. The iridescent flakes hurt the girls’ hands. The mixture wouldn’t stick together enough to make a snowman, but did manage to stick in every crack and crevice in the kitchen floor. That project was filed in…you guessed it…13.

We did successfully complete a couple of others.

And have a fun breakfast with these DEER young ladies before our adventure ended.

The wooden discs are still waiting in the work room. We’ll see what happens. I believe! Maybe the next post.

I tried. I really did. But it snowed, people! And it got chilly record-breakingly cold! And so what’s a body to do other than turn up the heat and put up the Christmas tree, right? And besides, I lost might have misplaced my wedding rings, and I needed to move all the furniture, remove all the sofa cushions, and vacuum up all that popcornchips dust that gathers in everyone’s house, of course. And so, when I rearranged everything, the only thing I found was a big empty space on one side of the room! No rings. Not even pocket change. Just a big empty corner that kept screaming, “CHRISTMAS TREE.”

I know I said last year was the last year for this tree, but here it is, more than a week before Thanksgiving and that tree is here. And I stayed with the same earthy tones. Rust just seems to fit in with our life style. The one thing I did differently this year was the garland. I left it off completely and went with ribbon. It was a much simpler process that I learned about here:

If you are tired of windingtwistingwadding messing with garland, give this a try. I mostly used ribbon I already had. I had planned to replace all my old lights with LED fancy ones and do the rag treatment that I used last year to make the swag for my dining room:

Now, I have all the boxes strung all over pulled out of their highly organized space, but I am trying…really trying not to do any more Christmas decorating until AFTER Thanksgiving. And, no, I will not be shopping on Black Friday. I’ll be heading to Columbia for the big Rivalry Line game. Let the MIZ-sooie-ing begin!

I’ve been a little AWOL in posting on either Camping Capers or Thymeless Sage and Random Rants lately. We’ve been busy purchasing lake property but doing some camping and fishing along the way. This weekend we were privileged to have Elle and her friend Kelsey for an overnight visit. I’m so very glad we did because it not only gave us a chance to craft a little, it also restored my hope for the younger generation. You’ll see what I mean.

Here we are doing a water color relief painting. The girls water colored fall shades onto their dampened canvases. I love how they have their own styles of doing things and are encouraging to each other in the process. After the painted canvas dries a bit, they will take some leaf stamps, press them into the fabric, and it should…I say should remove some of the color. It did, but then the white space slowly disappeared as the color was still bleeding. Maybe we got our surfaces a bit too wet. At any rate, we decided to use some acrylics and paint over the topography of the stamp and press that into the color. That worked a bit better.

Pretty, right?

So are the fun Halloweenish fingernails.

But after it was too dark to do anymore outside projects, then the REAL creativity began. These two friends have always had a flair for the dramatic, and Saint and I have laughed at their Carol Burnett like character skits, especially the old man and old woman scenes. This time, they changed it up a bit. When they asked if I wanted to play doctor, I was taken aback, unsure if their parents would approve, and also wondering just what my role would be in all this. Turns out, this is what I was talking about…restoring my hope in the younger generation. As they went to the junk drawer and brought out a note pad, pens, peppermints, balloons, etc., one volunteered to be the doctor, the other the patient, and I was assigned the role of nurse. Pre admission forms were made and filled out, and the free play-comedy began. I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so much. Such talent! From inserting pins into a shoulder of an 81 year old man diagnosed with Politis (This after Saint taught them the ropes of playing pool) to massaging “moldy feet” of another patient, and restricting certain movement to a patient named Miley, the hospital staff was busy and entertained.

It was a fun and simple project involving covering a tile with alcohol, dropping the alcohol inks on, and watching the colors combine. Sometimes, we went back and dropped more on just to see what would happen. After it dried, we chose one to sign with a Sharpie, and I sprayed them all with a clear finish.

And then they asked if we had a tent. I replied that we had one but it went on back of the truck. Now, here’s some more of that hope restoration I was talking about. They said they wanted to play Indians. I strung up the clothesline on the covered deck, put a sheet over it, and they were ready to play as soon as we gathered up some bowls, sticks, and other primitive cooking utensils. They went to the garden on a hunting/gathering mission and returned with a variety of leaves, berries, nuts, and flowers for their “concoctions.”

And here are the lovely Indian maidens playing just like my cousins and I used to play all summer long. Ah, the memories of mud pies and water fights! And the best part…

They left these outside the tent and I never saw them check them even once!

I was able to convince them to dabble in the paint one last time before we went inside. I thought this project totally fitting for the Drama Queens of the Good Sort.

A few board games later, the girls went upstairs. I saw them gather their doctor equipment and they soon had their hospital set up. When it was time for them to leave, I asked if they wanted me to go up and get the sheets off the bed and look around to see if they had left anything out of their overnight bags. They informed me they had already made the bed and picked up all their stuff.

Sure enough, when I went up this morning to get the sheets, the bed was made, well, just like a hospital bed. Everything was picked up, and the only reminder of their visit was on the door of the next room.